Halleck's New English Literature eBook

Although there is much sensible, stimulating criticism
in Johnson’s Lives of the Poets, yet
he shows positive repugnance to the pastoral references—­the
flocks and shepherds, the oaten flute, the woods and
desert caves—­of Milton’s Lycidas.
“Its form,” says Johnson, “is that
of a pastoral, easy, vulgar, and therefore disgusting.”

General Characteristics.—­While he is best
known in literary history as the great converser whose
full length portrait is drawn by Boswell, Johnson
left the marks of his influence on much of the prose
written within nearly a hundred years after his death.
On the whole, this influence has, for the following
reasons, been bad.

[Illustration: CHESHIRE CHEESE INN, FLEET STREET,
LONDON.]

First, he loved a ponderous style in which there was
an excess of the Latin element. He liked to have
his statements sound well. He once said in forcible
Saxon: “The Rehearsal! has not wit
enough to keep it sweet,” but a moment later
he translated this into: “It has not sufficient
vitality to preserve it from putrefaction.”
In his Dictionary he defined “network”
as “anything reticulated or decussated at equal
distances with interstices between the intersections.”
Some wits of the day said that he used long words to
make his Dictionary necessary.

In the second place, Johnson loved formal balance
so much that he used too many antitheses. Many
of his balancing clauses are out of place or add nothing
to the sense. The following shows excess of antithesis:—­

“If the flights of Dryden, therefore,
are higher, Pope continues longer on the wing.
If of Dryden’s fire the blaze is brighter, of
Pope’s the heat is more regular and constant.
Dryden often surpasses expectation, and Pope never
falls below it. Dryden is read with frequent
astonishment, and Pope with perpetual delight.”

As a rule, Johnson’s prose is too abstract and
general, and it awakens too few images. This
is a characteristic failing of his essays in The
Rambler and The Idler. Even in Rasselas,
his great work of fiction, he speaks of passing through
the fields and seeing the animals around him; but
he does not mention definite trees, flowers, or animals.
Shakespeare’s wounded stag or “winking
Mary-buds” would have given a touch of life
to the whole scene.

Johnson’s latest and greatest work, Lives
of the English Poets, is comparatively free from
most of these faults. The sentences are energetic
and full of meaning. Although we may not agree
with some of the criticism, shall find it stimulating
and suggestive. Before Johnson gave these critical
essays to the world, he had been doing little for
years except talking in a straightforward manner.
His constant practice in speaking English reacted
on his later written work. Unfortunately this
work has been the least imitated.